Chandra X-Ray Center

CIAO

Chandra Public

About the author

Following my dream of "studying the stars" after countless nights watching the sky as a girl scout in Italy, I started my astrophysics career in 1986 when I obtained the Laurea
Doctoral degree in Physics with a thesis in Astrophysics at the
University of Milano in Italy. Prof. Peppo Gavazzi was my advisor and
the thesis's title was "X-Ray Observations of the Cluster of Galaxies
Abell1367" based on data from the Einstein X-ray Observatory.

Immediately
after graduation I left for France to pursue astrophysics studies in
Paris and in 1987 I obtained the DEA--Degree of Advanced Studies in
Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the University of Paris VII.
After a period of a few months teaching physics in a high school in Italy, I returned at the Institut d'Astrophysique in Paris as a postdoc until 1990 after being awarded an European Space Agency (ESA) Post Doctoral Fellowship. With Dr. Michel Dennefeld I started to study starburst galaxies in the optical and infrared. I also gained a lot of experience with optical telescopes after many observing nights at the Observatoire de Haute Provence.

Two more fellowships from the A. Della Riccia and B. Bildt
Foundations allowed me to move as a post-doctoral fellow at the Space
Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore USA were I stayed until 1991 pursuing
my work on the AGN/starburst galaxies connection with Prof. Richard Griffiths. I was at STScI during the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990.

At the end of 1991 I was offered a job as a postdoc and later assistant research astronomer at the Center for EUV Astrophysics at the University of California in Berkeley, USA within the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer Project (EUVE). Launched on June 7 1992, EUVE was the first NASA satellite mission entirely dedicated to observations
in the wavelength range from 70 to 760 Å. In addition to my duties connected to the running of the satellite, I
studied EUV emission from Active Galactic Nuclei and Planetary Nebulae
and the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the interstellar medium.

Since 1995 I am an astrophysicist working in the High Energy

Division of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA) in Cambridge, USA. Within
the CFA I am a member of the Chandra X-Ray Center (CXC) which operates
the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, NASA's flagship mission for X-ray astronomy launched in 1999.
My duties in the CXC are split between the Science Data System (SDS) group and the Chandra Director's Office (CDO).
SDS is responsible for the design, specification, testing
and documentation of the Chandra scientific data analysis software and for the support of users analyzing Chandra data. The CDO group assists the Director in the running of the CXC.

Most recently the focus of my scientific research has been on multi-wavelength extragalactic survey and in
particular the COSMOS survey. COSMOS is a pan-chromatic – radio to X-ray – survey of a patch of the
sky both large enough (2 sq.deg) and deep enough (AB~26 at the optical
wavelength) to study galaxy and quasar evolution up to high redshifts in
typical environments, with minimal ‘cosmic bias’ .

I live in Arlington with my husband, also an astrophysicist, and our three boys.

Astrophysicist at the Chandra X-ray
Center, High Energy Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, Cambridge, USA

1993--1995

Assistant Research Astronomer at the
Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer Project, Center for EUV Astrophysics,
University of California, Berkeley, USA

1991--1993

Postdoctoral Researcher at the
Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer Project, Center for EUV Astrophysics,
University of California, Berkeley, USA
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